Overseas earnings reaches high

Mumbai: As Indian companies are aggressively making overseas acquisitions, earnings from their foreign investments are also growing.

Earnings from overseas joint ventures of Indian companies and their wholly owned subsidiaries by way of dividend, royalty, licence and technical fee and other inward remittances grew by 14.5 per cent during the first nine months of the fiscal 2007-08, over the same period in the previous year.

According to figures published in RBI’s April 2008 bulletin, inflows from India’s outward FDI increased to $337 million during April-December 2007, from $294 million in the corresponding previous period.

Though divided income increased to $29.41 million from $ 20.15 million, it accounts for only around 9 per cent of the total inflows.

Indian companies have invested $10.11 billion abroad during April-December 2007, as compared to $8.97 billion in the year-ago period, registering a 13-per cent increase. Of this, 89.9 per cent investments were in equity and the balance was loans extended by Indian companies to their joint ventures and subsidiaries abroad.

Proposals, investments:

The number of proposals and the total amount of investments approved during the nine months were also higher. In all 1,595 proposals involving investments of $18.43 billion, were approved during April-December 2007 as compared to 1,268 projects with $7.9 billion in the year ago period.

Singapore accounts for 37 per cent of the total amount approved for outward FDI, followed by Netherlands at 26 per cent.